S7E170: Building with Conscience - Cement's Eco Dilemma with Eoin Condren

Welcome to Project Chatter, the podcast where PPM experts from various sectors talk about the latest trends. Listen to Val and Dale as they talk about tried and tested best practices and share their unfiltered thoughts about the industry. Whether you're here to learn how to progress your career, improve your project control skills or just want to hear an Aussie and South African rant about projects, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to the Project Chatter podcast with your hosts Dale Fung and Val Matthews. In this week's pod, we were joined by Owen Condron to discuss building with conscience, cement, eco dilemma. Owen is a corporate development director at Ecosem in charge of the strategic structuring of the business to allow it to take advantage of the many opportunities that it currently has in front of it. He's been with the company two and a half years. His background is in finance and he spent 15 years working in real estate, infrastructure and tech, private equity, investing in the US, the UK and throughout Europe. He's a keen rugby fan and very average player whose lowest moment has to be the time, Dale, a prop outsprint at him, a fallback on winger on an attacking move or out 10 years ago. Who wrote this? That was a really interesting podcast, I don't think we spent one hour 20 talking about concrete, nothing. Who'd have thought that it could actually be such an exciting topic and there's just so much innovation going on in the industry. What were your thoughts, Dale? Yeah, absolutely. First, to clarify, I did not write that, but I genuinely did outsprint Owen when he was at the end of his career. But yeah, it was good times playing rugby with Owen. His Irish, his full of passion, loves his rugby, but clearly Martin also loves and has a lot of enthusiasm for cement, concrete and clinker. So let's not for what the difference is between those three folks. But as you say, we always felt it was Owen had the ability to make concrete sexy, but not as sexy as you did on this podcast. Were there certain things that stood out particularly for you, Martin? Did you want to highlight? Yeah, I really enjoyed his explanation of just the definitions because I certainly have used concrete and cement interchangeably and I'll be honest, I've never even heard of clinker until today. I really liked his explanation of some of the innovations going on in the industry. He talked about Timbro and that's that scene as a bit of a wonder product at the moment and some of the roles of governments in driving the change in innovation in the industry. How about you, Bill? Yeah, I think for me, the perspective globally that he brought on how concrete is, I guess, manufactured, how cement is manufactured throughout the globe is different depending on raw materials, what's available, the demand of concrete required for the speed of construction. So I think this one is really, really relevant to a lot of our listeners across the globe. He's very start-driven as well. I think Val would have enjoyed this one. He did. Yeah, we don't want to mention Val. He could cry or sick for this one, but anyway, we'll let him listen to this. We'll let everyone else listen to this as well, Martin. Let's leave it there, I think. So folks, as we say, keep listening, keep liking and keep paying it forward. In today's economic climate, construction cost and schedule overruns can be disastrous. An eight construction software helps you spot risks before they happen. Their cloud-based solutions give you the real-time insights you need to minimize risk and improve operational efficiency. Within eight, you keep projects on schedule and under budget. Get started today at innate.com. That's ian-e-i-g-h-t.com. Hello, project people and welcome back to a brand new episode of the project chatter podcast. You've guessed it. No Val on this one. He's cried file. I think he's probably drowning. He's sorrows, Martin, with Australia jumping out of the world cup at the pool stage. What do you reckon? Yeah, it must be. That's a curse of any Joneses. It looks again, but yeah, a bit more exciting for you guys. Ireland and South Africa. It absolutely is. And very apt for our guest on the show, Mr. Owen Conron, how you doing, sir? Very good. Even better after the weekend in Paris. Lovely, lovely. Well, there's a few more games yet to go. South Africa, Australia, South Africa, and Ireland's in. Martin, for you, England's in. I don't know how, but they're in. But let's talk to a cool cup too much. We'll say that maybe for the end. How do we make cement sexy? We'll try, I think, with the topic of this episode. But before we get there, Owen, I don't know if you mind sharing a bit of your origin story and sort of your backdrop and what's brought you to present day dealing with cement? Yeah, it's been a fairly roundabout chorus to get here, I suppose. And I did. My claim to fame is that I did actually do my thesis on cement, which is absolutely pathetic in many ways. But it actually got published. It got published. I took papers published. So there you go. At the very beginning, I had sort of I'd love a fair with cement for some strange reason, but hop back over as quickly as possible after uni where I studied engineering and Trinity College in Dublin. And I'm quickly left Ireland to get into the bright lights of London and into the world of finance. So I went into largely for the majority of my career. I've been in private equity to a large extent and investing into the various real estate, various asset classes, including real estate infrastructure, few tech investments along the way, spent some time in the states and business school. Came back out here to London and again, was investing across the UK, Europe, and the USA. So I sort of jumped into Ecosen probably two and a half years ago now, and having known them for quite a while actually. And they're an Irish company, been around for 20 years, and wanting led to another after various conversations. And they had really great breakthrough opportunities that I found too hard to resist trying to help out with. And hopped on there, computers go to help them basically try to take advantage of these big opportunities in various ways and it being an entrepreneurial company. There's been lots of learning curves, really along the way, having come sort of from more of a finance background, but I was looking up in my earlier career to spend a lot of time with operators and actually was in a tech company called VTS as well for a short time. So I had a nice sort of sort of sword leap over from finance to operations, back to finance and back into operations again. So all good so far. Nice, lovely. Well, you certainly aren't the average project professional we have on this podcast, which is great because you're going to bring us a different perspective here. But guaranteed I reckon 99% of our listeners work on projects that deal with concrete also means probably or clinker. But let's get into those. We love baselines. So myself, Martin, Val, we all have a project controls background, right? And what controls folks love to do on projects is set baselines. Right? We love them. We like baseline. We're there. That's like we geek out on baselines. The more detail, the better. What is cement? What is concrete? What is clinker? And what's the difference between the three? Okay. And if you want me to go detailed, I'm probably going to end up speaking with an ex out not stuff, but I'll try to take it in in in in tidbit so we can sort of keep the conversation going. But I guess the first place to start is that concrete is the sort of structural stuff that we see all around us. And I think the most important or one of the most important things to start with is just to recognize how amazing a product it is, frankly, and how it has shaped society for a long time to now and will continue to shape society for a long time to come. And you know, it's every so often the start is getting a bit of a bad rep and the bad rep around now is as a result of cement, which is in concrete. I wish I'd get back to in a second, but you know, the CO2 associated with that. But ultimately, it is a truly remarkable product. I mean, you've got this thing which is abundantly available around the world is incredibly cheap. So pretty much anybody can purchase it, incredibly easy to use, so anybody can use it can effectively flow like water and take any shape for about two hours. And then, you know, after two hours harden and stay that way for hundreds of thousands of years, like it is incredible. And it's used, as I said, extensively to rag the world. And it's sort of built the environments in which we live. So there's a huge amount of it consumed. And there'll be continuing to be a huge amount consumed. I think one of his books Bill Gates said, and I like using this quote because it sort of shows the scale, but he said that there's going to be a new New York City built every year, every month for the next 40 years. I mean, there's just a huge amount of building that continues to be doing across the world. And we sort of live in our developed world bubble where, you know, there's quite a lot of construction always going around. You just need to open your eyes. But when it comes to the world that is developing around us and into sort of certain Asia, Southeast Asia, certain parts of Africa, there's just a phenomenal amount of this stuff being consumed in any given year. And there's one other phrase that I tend to try and I read in the Guardian a couple of years ago and always stuck with me because it sort of shows the scale, because you can try words like there's 30 billion cubic meters of concrete consumed every year or 30, no one can get their hand around 30 billion, right? So there was a phrase I read in the Guardian a few years ago, it stuck with me and it was by the time you finished reading this sentence, 19,000 bath toves of concrete would have been poured. 19,000 bath toves of concrete would be poured in what was that 15 seconds or 10 seconds or maybe 20 seconds because I mumbled my words. But yeah, there's a huge amount of concrete being consumed any given time. So first of all, that's concrete. It's an amazing product. It's mind blowing handwritten as consumed any given year. Now, what's the difference between concrete and cement? Well concrete, as I said, is the hard structural stuff that you see all around you, is what buildings are made of, is what's in your foundations, roads, tunnels, etc. Cement is effectively the binder or the powder, the great powder that you see people pouring out of bags historically. And cement is the glue that essentially sticks the stones, the sand together after it mixes with water. And so the key issue, I guess, and first of all, it's important to recognize the difference between concrete and cement because everyone sort of puts the two of them together. But it is important to recognize there is a very, very big difference there. An important thing to recognize now if we sort of move on to CO2 aspect of things, I can sort of get that into a bit more detail, but I think it's just important to make the distinction between cement and concrete. And then you mentioned the word clinker dial, and you know, I probably don't get into this too early, but within cement, you've got this key constituent, which is called clinker. It's a key reactive constituent within cement or a certain conventional cement that we use. So I'll get into that in the CO2 context in a second, but you start with concrete, you move down a level into cement and you move down a level again into clinker. And the reason you have to go all the way down to clinker is because when you start talking to CO2, that's the sort of level that you need to go to because of all stems from clinker really. Right. That is such a good baseline. And you know what, you have such a passion for this. I mean, normally you and I are talking rugby mainly, and I feel like I could listen to you go on and on, in which I'm going to, and I'll see so many questions around this, but clearly the passion is there. Clearly that thesis you did, you know, is being used now. I think it's also fascinating for those listening in to understand the difference because I think you're right a lot of the times we talk in construction and we talk about CO2 in construction, but we don't actually know where it is. And so I think that's using the baseline for us to understand where the CO2 issues are or actually decomposing it first before we get to where the CO2 issues are. I think it's really, really important for those listening to understand the different constituent parts. So, so you were going on then, you're saying clinker is where the issue is that right? Yeah, absolutely. I think just to your point about understanding the constituent parts, it's really important because, you know, there's a phrase I've heard before, which is, or concrete, is ubiquitous to the point of anonymity. You know, it's so everywhere, it's so around you, it's sort of, it's, you don't even see it. Like, it's, there's so much of it everywhere. And people just say, concrete, cement, certain of those two things, just interchangeably. And it's really important to make that distinction because I think when you, when you don't think about something in any great detail, nor why would you, as the average citizen of the world, but when you don't think about it, it's really hard to get to that baseline that you're talking about. Can you have concrete without cement? No, it's actually, no. Now, you can have constriction materials without concrete, for sure. And, you know, just to sort of touch on that really quickly before I get to clinker. And, you know, as it relates to other constriction materials, and particularly as it relates to decarbonization, I'm a massive fan of exploring absolutely every avenue that we can to help decarbonize with, with the various building materials that we have. And clearly timber, for instance, is one that always gets brought up, is one that we should be focused on in more detail. And, to a very, to an extent, I totally agree with that, where, where possible and where available, and where it's reliably and sustainably sourced, we should absolutely be using timber. But we've also got to recognise, you know, those numbers that I mentioned earlier on about the amount of concrete that's consumed, and then you give an ear, just dwarfs any other building material that's available out there. So, again, I love my stats, so, but I feel that it helps bring context. But there was, there was a, another static read recently, which, which was a great analogy. And it was, if you were to replace only 25% of all the concrete consumed in any given year. So, for a single year, just replace 25% of that, maybe it was only 20%. You would have to cut down a forest 1.5 times the size of India. If you were to replace, just 25% of concrete for a single year with timber, that's how much timber you would have to cut down. It's, it's, it's just mind blowing again how much concrete is consumed, and how nothing else can be really sustainably put in this place. Now, absolutely, we should be using timber where possible, and where it's sustainable to do so. But we have to be realistic about what we're trying to do here. And I know I'm jumping ahead myself here, talking about decarbonisation, but rather than trying to replace concrete, we have to try and decarbonise concrete, which is where we have to try and decarbonise cement, which is where we have to try and decarbonise clinker. And the reason I say that and going all the way back to the baseline again is, well, I should mention where you're on is, let's take a big cube of concrete, concrete tends to come in meter cubes, okay? Take a meter cube of that stuff. And by only about 10% of that will be cement, okay? So the rest will be sandstones, water, etc. But only 10% is the pattern cement. However, that 10% converts into about 90% or 94% of the carbon footprint of concrete. So even though it's only 10% of the mass, it converts to 90% to 95% of the carbon footprint of concrete. So essentially, when you try to decarbonise concrete, the end product, you have to try and decarbonise cement. Now if you go down to the next level, when we talk about clinker, which is a constituent part of cement, on average in Europe, now it sort of changes from country to country, and the UK is, you know, I can't the UK is part of Europe in this respect, but like on average, about 75% of the mass of a bag of cement will be clinker. So 75% of the mass is clinker, however, 94% of that is or about 90 to 95% of that is the carbon footprint of cement is clinker. So you go from clinker, it'd been only 75% of cement, and cement only been 10% of concrete, but you've got this thing clinker, which is responsible for about 90% of all the carbon footprint associated with concrete. So you bring it all the way back to the baseline, as you say, Dale, and you can talk about efficient use of materials and these various other elements, but you essentially bring yourself back to this thing called clinker, and this thing called clinker is, again, it's an amazing product, and they'll talk about that in a second, why it is amazing, but unfortunately it's got a massive CO2 footprint associated with that. So when we talk about decarbonization of concrete, decarbonization of cement, we're actually talking about how we deal with this thing called clinker, okay. Where does clinker come from? Is it a natural resource? Is it mind? What is what is clinker? Yes, so clinker is basically the simplest way to put it is the way you make clinker is you dig up limestone, which is effectively the most abundant rock on the surface of the earth, and you heat that to an exceptionally high temperature, and you heat that to an exceptionally high temperature with a couple of other little things like clays, but generally speaking, you're talking about limestone, and so when you heat that up to, I think it's 1,450 degrees Celsius, and that obviously consumes a huge amount of heat energy, and that obviously the types of materials that we use to heat it with like pet coke or coal, it gives you a huge amount of CO2 when you do that. So there's a big CO2 footprint associated with the heating of the kiln to make to cook essentially the limestone. However, the CO2 emitted from that is only about 33% of the problem. Which is surprising to a lot of people because you think, you know, if I could just electrify this cement process, I'll get rid of the CO2 footprint. That will only solve 33% of the problem. 66% of the problem, by 2/3 of the problem comes from the fact that when you heat that limestone, it basically degrades into CO2 and clinker essentially, and let me explain that in a bit more detail and I told you I'd get detailed if you wanted to get detailed. We love this. Keep going. But limestone, it's chemical composition, and bear with me, is Ca CO3, calcium carbonate, Ca CO3. Now you recognize certain letters in there because what comes out the other side is CaO, which is essentially quick lime, or I'm combining a few things as clinker, and CO2. When that degrades, CO2 is just a natural emission associated with the production of clinker. So there's literally no way that you can produce clinker without producing a quite a huge amount of CO2. In fact, when you make clinker today, for every ton of clinker produced, you'll produce between 800 and 850 kilograms of CO2. So it's a huge amount, like it's nearly a one-for-one ratio, and that's because you've got these things called process emissions, which are basically, not the energy emissions are obviously what energy emissions. The process emissions are emissions associated with the CO2 simply coming out of the limestone and leaving you with clinker on the other side. So if we look, and I'll pause after a second, but like if we think about how we look to decarbonize clinker, or certainly the cement production process, there's two things you can do, if you want to, let's put it on cement, because clinker goes into cement. If you want to decarbonize cement, you can do one of two things. You can either capture all the CO2 that's coming out of this process. So as I say, there's a huge amount of CO2 coming out, capture as much of it as possible, and I'm sure you guys will know all about carbon capture and stores and utilization, and you may have even talked about it in your previous podcast. We can talk about that in a second if you want. The other way to decarbonize cement is simply to use less clinker altogether. So find ways of making cement where you don't need to go through this process of making clinker in the first instance. That's where we as ecosystems sort of place our business. It's the non-clinker usage element, and so as I said earlier on, you've got a situation today where about 75% of cement is clinker, of the majority of the CO2 of the cements is associated with that clinker. So therefore, try your darnness to try to reduce that clinker as much as you possibly can within your cement mix, because if you can reduce your clinker amount, you're going to, effectively or not effectively, linearly, almost reduce your CO2 output associated with that cement as well. So those are the two ways that you can decarbonize and we concentrate on the latter as it comes in. So that's awesome, and you explain it so clearly, and I think most people will be able to follow this very, very easily. Now, you've got to be fascinated in this clinker product because surely, if you don't use as much clinker, does it sort of botany, does jeopardize the concrete, or you're going to tell me, no, there's innovative ways, there's other means in which to strengthen the concrete by substituting, perhaps, the clinker. Is that sort of where you guys are at with us? Or absolutely, so clinker, so much clinker is consumed within the cement production process, because it is the most abundant, efficient way of making cement. So if you consider the fact that, I mean, the cement production process would be the same for over 200 years. I mean, it's pretty basic, if you think about it, I'm not giving it on, because there's been a lot of innovations at meantime, but essentially at its core, it's been digging up limestone, heating it to a very high temperature and having this great product at the end, which is very malleable. The CO2 thing has never been a massive issue, right? It's open till relatively recently, and Ecosem was actually founded in the early 2000s off the back of the Kyoto agreement, in the mid '90s, and it was doing really well for the early 2000s, and then buying the financial crisis head, and everyone forgot about CO2 again, open till relatively recently. I'm going to say relatively sort of three, four years ago, maybe a touch longer, but sort of in that time period, but there was never any need to look beyond clinker, because it was such an amazing product, right? However, there's a reason why only 75% of European cement is clinker. Why wasn't it 100%, why wasn't it 95%, why in fact in America, open till quite recently, it was 95% clinker cement, cement was 95% clinker. But the reason why Europe has a lower percentage, all right, into sort of 75%, is because there are other products out there that have very strong, cementitious qualities associated with them. So, cementitious is probably a word that there's a few people. That's a massive word. I've never used such a big word. Data five times over, but I'm sort of bamboozling people, I think, today, with the word clinker, and cementitious, but hopefully, every day is learning that, right? So, cementitious products are essentially hydraulic binders, which again isn't a very useful phrase, but it's essentially cement. Something that has cementitious or glueable binder properties, right? And so, there's a bunch of products out there that exist with these qualities. And they're really good. And they're even have superior qualities over clinker in many instances. So, the durability associated with some of these other products, which are called supplementary, cementitious materials, SCMs, are exceptionally good products. The challenge is that they are simply not as abundantly available as clinker. And remember, as I said, clinker is made from digging of limestone, one of, if not the most abundant, rock on planet earth on the surface. And these other products are not in many instances, or if they are, they just haven't been as researched as heavily over the last decades as clinker, because there's been no need to, because clinker is such a good cheap product, right? But there are others do exist. And whether they are byproducts of other industries, such as granulated blast furnace slags that come from the steel industry, coal has a byproduct called fly ash, both of which have been consumed extensively in the UK for a long period of time. Calcine clays, natural poselands, and indeed the pantheon, which we see standing proudly today in central Rome, was not built with clinker. It was built with a natural poselland. A poselland is a volcanic rock, which has very strong, cementitious qualities associated with it. So, there are lots of other products that do exist. They simply do not have the same availability or economic cheapness, let's say, as clinker production. And that's been a, well, as a result, it's never been a consideration. Now, because of the carbon situation, and because of the amount of CO2 associated with clinker production, we, as an industry, are beginning to focus more and more on these alternatives to clinker, because they generally speaking, if not all of the time, have a much less CO2 footprint associated with them than clinker does. And so, there's a lot of research being put into it at the moment to try and find out ways to reduce the clinker amount by as much as you possibly can in cement, and you're seeing some countries going faster than others. The UK, actually, because of historic, you have an abundance of sort of these byproducts from the steel industry or the coal industry, is actually quite advanced in clinker substitution, as we call it. The USA, albeit, has a strong coal industry and steel industry. It's generally being located in a very small geographic region in the Midwest. And as a result, in many other parts of the USA, it's got very high clinker amounts in its cement, because it just simply hasn't had access, or hasn't bothered, or whatever phrase you want to use, to really push the clinker element down, but that's a long, long-winded way of answering your simple question, which is, no, there are ways and means, and proven ways and means, to reduce the clinker amounts significantly without detrimentally impacting strength, quality, durability, etc. That's awesome. And I think what I take from that is one of the key, I guess, challenges or hurdles around moving away from clinker has been capitalism, and people want to make money, ultimately. And if there's a cheaper way to do it, and there's no incentive to use sort of more climate-friendly, carbon-friendly materials, then why do it? But I think that's changing. I think that's changing. Oh, absolutely. Just to jump in there, apologies. And this is where the CO2 is really changing the game at the moment. In Europe, in particular, the carbon tax system that's being set up is essentially going to buy 20, 35, so 10 years or 13 years or 12 years away. It feels like a long time, but in the world of slow-moving industrial products is only around the corner. And there will be a situation where the cost of producing a ton of clinker could triple, so as a result of the CO2 cost associated with clinker production being put in place by the European system at the moment. So at the moment, across Europe, emitters of CO2, in theory, have to pay a CO2 tax from the CO2 that they produce. However, those taxes have been largely hit from them for a long period, but between 20-20-20-25 and 20-35, gradually those barriers to CO2 taxation will start getting taken away bit by bit, such that by 20-35, they'll be fully exposed. And as a result, the cost of producing anything associated with carbon emissions will increase in cost significantly. And one thing I should have mentioned very long, that clinker, and you raise a great point down, or you're on about, it is a wonder product in many ways, except for the CO2. It costs about 35 to 45 euros, pounds, dollars, it's all kind of the same these days, but it costs in and around that region to produce a ton of clinker. 35 to 45. That's nothing. That's nothing. It's nothing. It's around the beers these days, you know what I mean? That's it, and a ton is a lot of stuff, right? So you've got this exceptional product, historically, that is really cheap, really abundant. I mean, you can call it capitals, you can call it whatever you want, but it just made sense. Why wouldn't you do this if you're not considered a CO2 element? Now, clearly, we are considering the CO2 element these days, and when you consider that the CO2 taxes could be, are certainly close to 100 euros, a ton of CO2 at the moment today, they expect it to rise significantly. You add on 100 euros of tax to this stuff. You go from 35 to 45 euros, a ton to produce this stuff to well over 100. And that's a massive impact. So these guys, like the cement industry is very, very focused on finding solutions, not to reduce clinker for clinker's clinker reduction sake, but because there's massive economic benefits in doing so. Do you think some of the tier one, tier two contractors are sufficiently bought in to reduce in their carbon footprint given the amount of carbon, given the amount of concrete usage, or is it almost going to be commercially driven, like you say there? And then my follow-up question to that is, in your view, what's the role of government in construction and working towards net zero? So in the UK, we have a target of being net zero by 2050. Do you think government should get more involved in regulating the industry? You've already mentioned the EU taxes on that. What's your kind of view of where the big construction companies are at the moment? And then what should the government government be doing? Yeah, yeah. So actually, it's really interesting. I think again, working through to the baseline, as Dan said at the beginning, I'm an engineer at hard, so I'm deciding to do you guys, I'd like to do this. But we actually work with some of the biggest construction companies in the world, like Vancey Construction or Vinci, whatever it's pronounced, a very sort of parts of the world, like Vancey Construction in France. We work extensively with them, and some of our low-carbon, exceptionally low-carbon products have been used by them in the likes of the Grand Party Express, which is Europe's, I think, biggest infrastructure project. The athletes' village, pretty Olympics, we're using stuff with them. I think we poured something with them in Heathrow Airport recently. So we're doing quite a lot of stuff with these contractors, and I think there's a real desire amongst the contractor industry to drive low-carbon construction. And I think the, if you think that through, I think a lot of it comes from, if you think about the very, very top of the chain, that the finance world, where I historically sort of inhabited, and they're demanding low-carbon construction. Now, governments are demanding to an extent, and we'll get onto that in a second, low-carbon construction. And so, as a result, contractors feel the need and the pressure to bring forth low-carbon construction. You then move down to the next level of that particular chain, and that's the concrete producers. So concrete producers are different to cement producers. Concrete producers consume cement that comes from the cement producers to produce the concrete to make the buildings that the contractors want. So concrete producers are different cement producers, and so the concrete producers are under a large amount of pressure to decarbonize or certainly bring through low-carbon cement and concrete as well. The challenge then occurs that when those concrete producers go to the cement industry, and the solution simply aren't fully available. People are working on these now, but they're simply not fully available now because when it was a lack of incentivization or lack of a need to change or whatever the case was, if there's only high-carbon cement available, what you're going to do, like you can't do much, like the building has to get built. So the concrete guy has to take the cement that's available. If that's high-carbon or low-carbon, let's hope it's low-carbon, but if it's not, so be it. And you know, if you can call it whatever you want, but if you want to get your building built, you have to sort of roll with the punches to a certain extent. So, but I think absolutely, there's a desire across the chain, but particularly at the very top of the level, at the finance government level, I think in terms of certain, in terms of, I don't think it's a purely platitude either. I think that they genuinely want this happen. And those are just little contractors doing the same. But change, we will get the change that we need to get eventually. I think where governments sit is their ability to accelerate that change. And so, I mentioned earlier on in Europe, and the UK has followed the European model of carbon taxes now. There's been a few recent slight amendments at a political level around that whole sort of mechanism. But generally speaking, carbon taxes across the UK and Europe are a very, very strong mechanism by which we can incentivise or force the pace of change from a decarbonisation point of view. And you're beginning to see that sort of filter through and the amount of innovation that's coming through. However, you know, governments can always do more. And ultimately, governments are generally speaking across the developed world. They're the ones who consume 50 to 60 percent of all cement produced. You know, infrastructure projects in room by governments are massive. And you certainly don't build tunnels or bridges out of wood, generally speaking. It tends to be, or certainly a huge amount, it tends to be cement or concrete. So, their consumption is absolutely massive. So they can absolutely drive the necessity to bring through low carbon cement and really drive through the acceleration towards low carbon and simply not take no for an answer. So, for instance, in Ireland, where I'm from, I was really proud to sort of see an announcement. I think about six months now, where the government not only specified, and I'm just still going to regulation apology, so I'll see where I sort of lands, but they not only specified low carbon cement had to be used, but they specifically said low clinker cements. And that's a really, really important thing, because if you specify low clinker, again, as I say, you're going right to the source. And I think governments getting smarter around that, I'm really getting specific in their requirements for low carbon. It's only going to benefit things. Another example is, for instance, in the Netherlands, where if the government is undertaking a public procurement project there, if you are within 10% of the project cost, but you can prove that you are low carbon through various metrics, you will win that over your competitors. So it's really setting the bar and accelerating the degree to which low carbon can be incentivized. Yeah, that's really interesting. What you're saying there, about being a real driver for change, you know, it kind of thought back about the plastic bag tax in the UK, it almost reduced the consumption by about 95% overnight. Yeah, you've mentioned so far, a lot of the countries and governments who are doing these kind of carbon taxes and incentivizing it are probably more developed countries, more European countries. Where? So how are the China's India's of the world? How far behind do you think they are behind the UK, Europe, America? Are they on the same trajectory? Do they have the same incentives? It's, so it's really, right? So here's the thing, in many developed nations, they actually have a lower clinker content in their cement than we do here. I'd also say it's completely counterintuitive, given everything I said about the low cost production of clinker. But let me explain that. To produce a, or to build a clinker plant, it'll cost you between 250 and 350 million euros pounds dollars, whatever, maybe even more these days with inflation. But it costs a huge amount of money and these are big old pieces of machinery. So to get, to find the correct piece of land in the right location, close to your raw materials, apply close to the end consumptions supply to get the planning permission and whilst I appreciate in some countries planning permission might be easier than others. Nevertheless, these things do pollute the air in many respects. You know, a lot of countries including China and India are really rising up to air pollution. It can take a long time to not only source your land to get your planning permission to eventually build this and it costs you a huge amount of money. When you consider the difficulty in in bringing these things through, let's park that for one second. It's very difficult. Now you flip over to a country like China or India, which is building like crazy, right? These guys, and remember when I said there's a a new New York City going to Procrastra world every single month, like these guys are building like nobody's business and not just in India and China and many other countries. So it's not a CO2 problem. Their issue is capacity. How can I keep getting more and more of this stuff out when it costs so much money and it takes so long to set up one of these plans? I still need to build bridges. I still need to build hospitals, schools, houses etc etc etc and I can't do a fast enough. So you end up in this sort of situation where necessity is a motor of all invention. So you use the materials that you have available to you to produce the cement that allow you to move forward as fast as you possibly can. Don't get me wrong. They still consume a large amount of clinker but the amount of clinker that they have in their cement can be nearly 50% less or certainly 35% and 40% less than the average European or American cement. So the clinker content of cement in the USA is anywhere between 85% and 90% in Europe sort of 75% dish down around China a few years ago was down to 50% because they were just finding other stuff. They had a big steel production industry which had a lot of bite product coming off but they had lots of pile plants in India. They can put that into their product. So again it comes down to the availability of that material associated with well first of all is the geography set up for you. Just because limestone is a variable in the products or rock just means it's everywhere perfectly around the world but you still have to build everywhere in the world. So there's a thing of a can you build your kinker facilities fast enough? B is the raw material available to you and if it's not and you can't build fast enough find whatever as you can to get your stuff built. And back to your point, these countries are building really, really, really robust pieces of infrastructure with clinker contents that are a lot less and necessarily what they need to be you could argue. But yeah, I don't know if that answers your question mark but it's a weird one and it's very location specific and in fact in I go back to the point of raw material availability and a lot of West Africa there ain't no idea there's no limestone, right? There's no limestone. So what are you going to do? They've imported a lot of clinker historically to build the structure that they need to build but in the likes of Ghana they've now moved to a product called calcine clay which is essentially it's clay that you heat up to a very large extent that performs like a cement. It's just because it doesn't have the CO2 and it's in its core being it doesn't decarbonize that respect in the same way as clinker decarbonizes or throw throws the CO2 into the atmosphere. So you can make calcine clays instead of clinker in Western Africa and that's not necessarily a capacity issue with building their plants fast enough if they don't have the raw material. So it depends on different parts around the world. You will see these really interesting opportunities where the mother's nest that what is it? Necessity is the motor of all invention type scenario that's a key popping up is really interesting. I love this. I don't know if you know this about me but I grew up in South Africa and my one of the businesses my family had was a building supplies store. And I knew what concrete was made up of I mean obviously asked you this for the audience today but I knew you took some ends you mixed it with whether it's sand and crush around as we called it and you know where it's one to four and the different parts of water and you made concrete. But I find it fascinating then you can decompose all the like I say the constituent parts to make us truly understand where carbon is and bring this back up to your point on sort of almost substituting clinker. If the alternative as you say is carbon capture and carbon storage because there just isn't enough other raw material to replace clinker. What are we doing as an industry or as around the globe? What are the different types of carbon storage and capture when it comes to making cement I guess with less clinker or no clinker even or with clinker that emits carbon during the process. Is this stuff we're doing? Yeah yeah okay so let me just put you straight on on one thing low carbon cements and low clinker cements are being used widely across Europe and around the world okay. Not widely enough and let's let's take Europe as an example because you know it's closest to home and you know it is a technological. The really interesting thing about Europe actually is that it is home to essentially the cement industry you know it's cement industry is one of the few industries along with the car industry where Europe is a genuine leader the likes of Hulsam, Heidelberg, Bootsie, Vika these are you know the biggest cement companies in the world I try to China but they are genuine world leaders and so let's let's be clear you know at low clinker cements low carbon cements do exist so for instance whilst the clinker content of the average cement in Europe will be by 75% in the Netherlands for instance it's below 50% because there is a large steel industry in the Netherlands which can consume the slags that are that come off that so so I'm and indeed the construction project that we're undertaking with Vancey the the Grand Prix Express we have Europe's lowest ever carbon CO2 footprint cement being used in that and it's got a carbon footprint that I think about 75 kilograms per ton of cement when a ton of traditional or conventional cement would be more like six hundred so we're nearly ten times as you do right the issue is and you did point this out to be fair and is that historically it's been very difficult to scale low carbon cements because there simply isn't the abundance of materials available to do so in comparison with clinker and in comparison with the amount of construction that we need to undertake however this is I guess where a huge amount of innovation is taking and so for instance at ecosystem as an example we're not resting on our laurels by saying okay we've got a really cool low carbon low carbon cement but what do you do you can only produce so much of that because there's only so much of that material available that's not really going to it's nice to do in a particular product but you're a project but you're not decarbonizing the industry and we've got emissions decarbonized industry so we are bringing forth new methodologies new low carbon alternatives and other people are doing the same to an extent where we can reduce the car the clinker amount of cement by up to 70% you know from the 75% it is today down to about 20% on average clinker footprint or clinker content within cement on a truly scalable global level so just just if it just to be I just want to sort of point out that historically you're right and it's very difficult to scale low carbon cement because the amount of unabundantly available materials was holding that back and however that is changing with a huge amount of research and development being undertaken by ecosystem and many others but I guess parking that for one moment and by saying that today we feel that you go say the most scalable low carbon cements that you can possibly make will have still about 15 to 20% clinker in the cements on a scalable basis you're still left with CO2 yeah and so we still need to look at carbon capture as a platform that can help ultimately get us to net zero and I think what we're very passionate about saying in ecosystem and another low carbon cement producers is that we should focus on the low hanging fruit that we have available today i.e. try to reduce the clinker amount within cement by as much as we possibly can using all of the materials that we can and focus as much or indeed development as we can on bringing that down because if you can get rid of the CO2 at the source you don't need to worry about capturing it and utilizing it in the future and I think unfortunately a lot of focus rightly or wrongly has been to solely focus on CCUS as the answer or the panacea almost to the detriment of looking at anything else and so you know I am more behind carbon capture in storage than nearly anybody else because I focus on cement nature look at cement and I know how important carbon capture in storage is but the thing is if we purely focus on that on a technology which really won't be abundantly you know or what really won't be widely used to the mid 2030s at least and then has various operational issues associated with that if we're waiting until then we've lost the game you know we have to be carbonized by a huge amount by 2030 so let's not just focus or put all our eggs into that particular basket let's focus on pulling down the low hanging fruit elsewhere as well and I feel you know at government level it's sort of back to your point earlier on Martin I think the government for instance is focused on on low carbon cement and is focused on the consumption of low carbon cement and the reason being by the way I failed to point this out at the very beginning the CO2 associated with the production of cement represents about 7 to 9 percent of all CO2 produced globally I mean that's a lot that's more than aviation which we all know about shipping which we all know about and long haul trucking which we all know about combined combine those three whoa and cement is still more so governments are really really focused on this but sometimes we feel like the focus is too myopically in one particular direction I'm not spread across a number of different levers which we need to pull like for instance take the power sector we didn't decarbonize the power sector by just putting carbon capture plants on coal plants we didn't say oh the only way to produce power is to burn coal and we'll pull carbon capture on top of that no we pull that wind we pull that solar we pull that hydro nuclear etc etc etc and we're continue to innovate in those places and so we we say the same if I pretty much every industry and given we're in this industry that's what we focus on our ecosystem as well so it's interesting if we if we look at perhaps life cycle analysis of concrete right from it all the way from production all the way to deconstruction are there potential recycle reuse technologies that we that we can use that that help with carbon as well absolutely and you know we in fact I was I was chatting to I introduced a company to our or indeed department about a month ago with a company that's doing some really interesting stuff in this space so again particularly in Europe and there's been some really great innovations happening with the recycling of concrete fines for instance and these may or may not have cementitious qualities associated with them but you can certainly use them instead of landfill in them you can certainly and you should be used them now we at ecosystem and again politics is just sort of to keep banging on with us and but we again it's like timber like as far as we're concerned we absolutely should be doing this but for us and you can't recycle concrete fines in soaps of hard Africa when there's nothing to recycle you know these guys are still building new roads infrastructure buildings so we have to find ways of allowing the developing economies to grow but on a low carbon basis on yes absolutely recycle where we can recycle use timber where we can use timber but ultimately our focus is on finding how we scale low clinker cement and we feel passionately like that's where the focus needs to be because that's the most if you can crack that note it's sort of it's kind of it's the nuclear fission sort of situation where it's like higher issues are no longer a problem and do I get that right was that a higher fission or fusion is the big one that we're trying to crack I can never agree but yeah we feel like getting clinker as low as cost possible to zero is where we need to focus efforts and you know we're not the only ones doing that there's a lot of very smart people including the majors trying to do that and we will see results in the next few years but I think we can ask you how close are we I mean is there is there an alternative to like yeah like you're not going to give away your secrets I can give away a few like I think we focus I mean listen when we talk about using the most abundantly available materials to help produce less clinker all we do is not all we do it's is it's very complicated for the sound quite simple instead of burning the limestone to produce clinker we grind the limestone and before putting it through the through the through the process so I don't want to go too far down a rabbit hole here but you know given here you're you're you're pulling some off or going into detail now I'll go down a little bit and but basically I mentioned earlier that on average in Europe it can cement contains about 75% clinker it contains about I don't know 20% ish other low carbon cements and it contains about five ish percent limestone just filler it's just filler material it's just like ground chalk just and you just throw it in there and it's called filler because all you're doing is just filling out the space like you're filling out more space with this so you can produce more cement basically for free and and that limestone filler is it's inert it's abundantly available because it's also limestone and it's ridiculously cheap and it doesn't give out any CO2 it's just like you've been used for very very minimal purposes what we do at Ecosm is we maximize to a huge degree the amount of filler that can be used in cements and thereby reducing the amount of clinker required by as much as possible you can and also reducing the amount of low carbon materials within that cement that need to be used as much as possible and the reason why we minimize those as much as possible is because if we minimize those in any ton of cement it allows us to spread the availability of those supplies over a much much greater volumes of cement and concrete so we're trying to minimize in any given ton of cement so it can benefit in much larger amount of cement and concrete and but we do so by maximizing the use of this limestone filler within cement also it's very easy obvious there's massive technological technological challenges associated with that but there are ones that we are overcoming and others are overcoming as well and it's a really I don't know how I'll explain this but there's a very exciting space in the material science world that the increased use of filler materials in nerd filler materials and basically using any inert filler material that is in your presence just grinding it up as fine as you possibly can throw near cement and through various methodologies and manipulations you can get a very very robust very strong very durable cement and concrete and to keep your cleaner content as low as you possibly can. Three thousand have been known before and alongside the sort of technical challenges associated with that is because there's never been the incentive right we mentioned earlier on like why would you go through the trouble of it's a complicated procedure it's difficult to do the whole construction industry has been set up to do high clinker cements everything's working tickety-boo you know it's what white white changes it's own and we have a phrase internally cosine is CO2 changes everything it really does and it brings through innovation and there's a lot of people focusing on this type of stuff now I bet that we're towards or if not at the vanguard of that and that's an exciting place to be but there are people chasing this down because if you can maximize the amount of filler material it's cheap it's abundant it has no CO2 you're onto a winner given the amount of work that's going on clearly in in your industry and companies such as yourself do you feel generally some of the major European American governments are committed and not to hitting that zero target so you know we've seen recently in the UK they've rolled back on some of the short-term commitments still with you know still aim towards 2050 but do you think this is is this really affecting use like is it hampering helping within the construction industry because some of it is going to be commercially driven like like you're saying there there's there's it to the need and there's obviously clearly some brilliant work happening like what's the impact on yourself yeah I think it's really interesting I think another really key benefit of maximizing the amount of filler in in your cement is that it's also really cheap to do and it's it's we're not getting a new foo foo material from the moon you know that that sort of can be used in in a few tons of of concrete we're we're using abundantly available materials and we're doing it very cheaply and you're able to do it in the existing cement plants and facilities that are available around around the world today so I think you know leave in governments to one side I think there is a genuine desire in in the capitalist world down that wants to decarbonize and there's a real desire to do so and I think if you can produce low carbon a low carbon alternative that is in and around the same price as the high carbon alternative you will see people go for that and now I think when I when I said earlier on where governments can help is I genuinely believe they can accelerate it and I think they need to accelerate but I think people are going to inevitably move in this direction anyway and but like to give to give an example of our own company we we're out the door in terms of people and getting in touch with us about this product about when they can use it about how they can help us get it through the standardization process as quick as possible so that they can use it because they want that competitive advantage I mean if you're a concrete producer and you can go to a contractor whoever that may be and say see that guy over there he's got he's got the I've got the same product as he has but myzo carbon that's a very strong competitive place to be and whether governments are necessarily genuinely back in that or rolling back on that it's kind of moves from from from our perspective you know that's kind of micro I think at a macro basis it's again it's quite interesting I think you're seeing different things happening in different economies right and I actually for my sins spend a lot of time in the likes of Brussels Westminster the Irish equivalent I can't speak French so some not in France but we've got a team we're doing this but like it's we spend a lot of time trying to get this message out to governments and super governments that alternatives are available and should be heated and should be brought forward and it's very interesting to see the different approaches that you're seeing in the likes of the USA versus Europe versus the UK I think most are directionally traveling in the same direction some possibly more slowly to know theirs but what I find more interesting is how they're doing it you know the USA is throwing literally a trillion dollars at the problem you know I mean it's that the I was an inflation reduction act the IRA you know they are throwing money at this Europe has an aging population it's not the base currency of the world it's got its own sort of longer term problems it doesn't it can't just throw trillions of dollars at the or euros of this thing instead it uses regulation and it uses stuff like carbon taxes to get through the problem and the UK is trying to play somewhere in between the two of them and you know I think it needs to get a bit more sophisticated and how it thinks about it but and I think you know there's obviously elections coming up and so there's going to be a lot of politics played around this particular element but I think generally genuinely and generally directly everyone's moving in the same direction and you know China has its own way of doing things in India has its own way of doing things but there's a real I think there's a real need and desire to to make this work I think it needs to be faster and I think the focus absolutely has to be on 2030 as opposed to beyond that and but I do think people are and trying in many instances to do the best they can yeah I think you're right Owen it's always dangerous when an Irishman talks about the IRA but we won't go down there I mean yeah they couldn't name that better couldn't I mean go by he's he tells himself Irish and he and he and he named it that I think that was pretty special I don't know all you're saying that but on your on your point about price point you're right though if you think about it right you you'll only get to the right price point when you achieve economies of scale and when anything new you're always going to it's always going to be more expensive in the beginning because you you're throwing money at research it's you know new tech you don't you don't have necessarily the factories the machinery the technology bolts to scale yet and I think you're right this way governments can help if they potentially force industry to go that way we'll get to that right the correct price point where you know using low carbon or no carbon concrete with the right technology is the same price as using concrete with absolutely and and it's it's you know they don't necessarily even need to force as a salary run in many nations like governments consume 50 to 60% of the product so even if they just want to prove that a technology works or help it get to the scale that allows it to get to its economies of scale and brings down the overall cost they can play a huge part in that there's obviously incentives there's tax breaks there's straight up grants that are available and I think again back to my point on CCUS and I think it's been to my after key focus in in one particular direction all associated with that as opposed to other types of low carbon cement technologies but you know that's beginning to change as well and I think you're going to see the fruits of or the rewards going off the back of that but I think a good starting point is governments putting their money where their mouth is and actually consuming this stuff themselves yeah now I agree with you if they're you know one of the the key I guess the the monitors if I will for lecture a bit away of putting it of the product then then they they are part of the problem and if I and this one might be a little bit left field Owen but with all innovation going into concrete and you know the past sort of month of few weeks back and it's probably still in the news or AAC right it's being used for the wrong reasons technology my research and you you hit me something is always in danger potentially of creating innovation in concrete and then you know decades later realizing that potentially the innovation we had has jeopardized the standard quality etc or do you think we've got the right standards protocols process in place to prevent that from happening yeah listen I think there's a number of lessons to be learned from the RAC situation first of all actually technically wasn't even a concrete it was it was it was it was essentially a mortar you know but I think the here's the thing about that as well and it actually lasted for its technical lifespan you know it lasted for the 30 years and beyond that it was meant to do so the problem was that for whatever reason local authorities or government specified it in buildings that were clearly going to last longer than that and the reason for all of that was because they had to build really quickly after the war you know I mean this was a necessity situation in the UK at the time and you know franky it's a dog that's come out the wrong way like it's cranky a testament that lasted so far beyond its technical lifespan right I mean that's an amazing thing right so I think but to get more serious on it like that was a failing of planning of government due process and making sure that we're keeping our citizens and children safe and I think nowadays that the standards process are unbelievably rigorous and it is it can take 15 years for a new cement to get through into the markets you know now and from our opinion from our point of view that's far too long because the rate of technological change allows you to test and manipulate and check the durability and strengthen these things far faster than that particular time frame and nevertheless we are seeing a robust standardization process being brought up and I mentioned earlier on that Europe is I guess the epicenter of cement science in many respects and where Europe standards lead many many others follow so whether that's in in Africa many parts of Asia so in the USA it's slightly different they've got their own standardization process also exceptionally robust and say the America tends to follow that so but the processes that are in place today are nothing in comparison to 1950s UK where things were rushed through and don't get you wrong we shouldn't the most important thing about cement and concrete is not a CO2 content it's the fact that it needs to stay up it needs to say stave it needs to be robust it needs to be durable but I think the really good news associated with all of this is the the low carbons clinker alternatives and I mentioned that they've been used for for donkeys years even when CO2 was an issue they were used largely for performance bases so they actually help you know I said earlier on figure it has many many many advantages abundancy abundancy of supply cost association ease of use etc etc the low carbon alternatives to clinker have been used historically for their durability advantages so you know in many seaside structures or infrastructure projects you will have low carbon alternatives to clinker specified not because they're low carbon but because they've got better durability and traits associated with them so again fairly long we did answer to your pretty simple question dial but I think in a nutshell a the standards processes are far more robust and they are exceptionally robust trust me we spent a lot of time going through these processes we were very confident by them and but I guess the alternatives to clinker based cement can do and will show benefits from a durability point of view as well now you bring up a good point there um durability and I know it ranges depending on you know how the concrete is put together um what's the makeup of it how it's being installed maintained all that type of thing but it was quite interesting I was chatting to Adam Robinson who's been on the podcast before and he was project director of the Boston barrier and he was saying if we're designing for example the Boston barrier anything else to last for a hundred years um what happens after that because you know we did some massive construction projects right um do we have an answer I mean we won't be around or maybe we will who knows they might be a pull that someone mints but um if we're if we're only designing them for a lifespan of let's say a century what happens beyond that are we actually constructing uh buildings and the things that are actually going to end up crumbling one day and we're going to have a massive problem I don't know like I think um look look look at the I got back to my point about the pantheon okay um pantheon's been around for there was a thousand years over thousand years or so soon around then um that was built with a post-alonic material um a a uh what we would call a low carbon cement alternative to that but basically it was the cement that they used back in those days they didn't have clinker clinker has been around for about 250 odd years um so as it relates to uh the buildings that we are building today my guess is that uh the more we understand about technology the higher our standardization process goes I think that the longer lifespan that is is is demanded uh by uh weather standardization industries or or governments or what have you I think you'll actually see modern buildings lasting longer than uh buildings that have been built in the last 100 years right um because we know that these are problems because we are seeing things crumble we are seeing this or I mean this or a ac thing that is going to roll on for years and you will see lots of um positive benefits coming on out of back of that so listen I I don't know the exact cement or concrete that's been used in this buster and barrier I don't know the specification profiles are you going into it that's for then to determine um but there are ways and means that you can get exceptionally durable um uh uh products um into the market and if if if you'll indulge me for one last go of course um here here here's I'll give you I'll give you a bit of insight into into into key innovation um the I mentioned at the very top of the podcast um that uh we one of the great benefits of concrete is that it flows like water for a couple of of hours it takes any shape for a couple of hours on the hardens right so we like our concrete to flow like water uh here's the really counterintuitive thing uh too much water can be bad for your concrete because concrete or with too much water ends up having little pores in it and uh full of little water globules which eventually evaporate and when they evaporate they lead to little cracks which ultimately disintegrates the concrete so you want to get to a situation where you have low water cement in concrete right and if you bring down your water content that's a really really good thing to do for your long term durability and long term strength of your product however what's i going to leave you with it's sort of a gloopy viscous mess of a concrete that can't flow like you wanted to flow and that's where you're seeing a lot of really interesting innovation happening in the market today bringing down the water content of uh of concretes and to it but they still still very methodologies and means can still flow like water and have those longer term durability profiles associated with that not sort of innovation at its heart and people tend to think that cement is cement is cement concrete is concrete is concrete is completely the exact same way for hundreds and thousands of years what could be possibly different about its everywhere but there's the amazing innovation going on in this space is pretty insane yeah you must have seen those competitions where people build concrete canoes exactly exactly have you see that Martin you look like yeah they build concrete canoes and they try and make them see where the buoyant and it sounds crazy but yeah go and have a youtube of it it's pretty cool um oh and i i'm fascinated talk honestly genuinely like i know you've been on other podcasts i've listened to you on on how passionate you are about this topic but i love the fact that you passionate about it because i've never spoken to someone that's as excited about concrete as you are i mean you know you only top it by your love for rugby uh which we probably should give to you and your love for me it's mutual it's mutual um we got to go into a bit of prediction we're recording this ahead of the the quarter finals of course island are playing New Zealand island on number one in the world do you have a prediction for us oh my gosh i mean this is i i literally uh barely stepped a wing last night because i'm already excited about this game so by the time the game rolls around i'm not even sure how life i'll be awake to watch it let alone predict what the score is going to be um but it is uh i think this is probably the biggest game of of in in Ireland Irish would be history and i think it's basically going to come down to they've proven over the last couple years that they can handle the pressure but i mean this is just at a whole other level and i'm having to beat the all blacks down in uh New Zealand them like like when the test series at New Zealand last year uh i i think um what's it uh an all black score and is an all black you know you want to be wary about you know um no i think it'll it'll come down to i think that the the the key is that uh i think Ireland as a unit are incredible and there are beautiful things to watch it's a it's a well world machine i think i actually get a bit annoyed when people just call them side the um you know robotic because i think there's a lot more skill and that deserves but i think we can sort of hands up say that the individual is coming out of the all black team or New Zealand team or you know they've just they've always had the best rugby players in the world right i mean they they just do they can break a game so obviously like i don't know what the odds are but it's going to be ridiculously tight of course i'm going to say i're going to do it i've now jinxed my entire country so if they don't get through and i'm not promoting this once or wherever for you the beauty about it own is this this podcast we're going to get released off to the results so today i like it well at least i'll give you my New Zealand prediction downstairs so you can just copy that one no we'll keep it in we'll keep it in um if i if i add my my view on France, South Africa um i i do think we'll edge them uh just because i don't think France have come up against a very robust physical side in a long time um so but if South Africa don't make it through my support is behind islands so there you go um look it would be remiss of us also not to mention give a shout out to our rugby club the rosin park no meds as well all meds as we know one last question from me own what do you think the the the lads are going to say listening back to you and i talk about concrete i don't think don't make it this far i think i fully expect lots of abuse to come my way and it's it's all well deserved and as you say to get passionate about uh concrete and cement takes a very special person and i'll take all slings and arrows like on my way as a result so bring it on awesome awesome look it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you i know there's so much more we could go down as you say there's many many rabbit holes i feel like we we definitely need to get you back when we have some more technology advancements particularly around clinker and the reduction thereof um it sounds like you know there's exciting innovation happening in and around concrete and it's very very appropriate to the the vast professionals that listen to this podcast around the globe so thank you for your time i really really appreciate it um before we let you go or the any final thoughts you want to leave our listeners with um no just um you said next time when when when we have innovations we're talking about i think it's um it's it's it's happening it's it's it's out there i think everyone can sort of play their part as i say cement is ubiquitous to the point about anonymity but i think it's um it's it's a case of pushing your government leaders to to really take notice of this i think it's one of those products that let's face it it's gray it's pretty boring not many people think about it um but it is it is a massive massive issue and a massive problem and there's lots of specific issues within the UK which i didn't even twitch upon which we could even use it next time um but it's it's really important that we get this right um it's a along with steel uh the biggest industrial producer CO2 and we have got to get both of those industries right so um if i can spark the imagination of anybody out there to sort of look into this earlier i think um i'll be i'll be happy mad because um it deserves more focused than it it it probably gets um but um i'm excited by what the short term future holds in it yeah absolutely and i think you've certainly sparked i imaginations and a whole bunch of listeners listening to this so once again thank you very much oh and condron there you have it folks that is the episode or that is the episode that is the end of this episode um but remember before you go please do help us pay it forward and share a link to this episode on your favorite social media once again a massive thank you to our guests on this episode own condron and thank you all for listening until next time we say stay safe be disruptive and have fun doing it from me and martin it's bye for now for more information blogs or to support our charities visit projectchatterpodcast.com and if you would like to sponsor the podcast get in touch via our website you can also leave us a voice message via our anchor page and let us know if there's something or someone specific that you would like on the podcast the views thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to the participating individuals and not necessarily to the 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